Apparition by Ambrose Bierce — Past Poetry archive

“The ghosts are all gone,” the Bulletin cries. O neighbor, good neighbor, where are your eyes? Gruesome and ghastly, beneath your nose A ghost is stalking that never goes. With a stony eye and a brow of gloom, It enters the editorial room, It haunts the passages, haunts the stairs⁠— Editors, printers alike it scares; But the reader most it appals, for still It writes and writes with a real quill, On real paper, in real ink, The phantoms of thoughts that dead men think. Sheeted ideas from wormy brains Troop o’er the paper, and spooks of strains Of sepulchral laughter seem to float In the air as the ghost reads what it wrote; And a faint, white, phosphorescent ray⁠— The visible eloquence of decay⁠— Gleams on its lips as it reads each word In a tone that no mortal before has heard. Copy to printer and ghost to tomb⁠— Silent the editorial room. O the Bulletin ghost is indeed a most Remarkable kind of a Bulletin ghost. Who sees it cries, as his heart were bled: “O God! will Bill Bartlett never stay dead?”